ILTA WHITE PAPER: JULY 2014 WWW.ILTANET.ORG
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THE AGILE LITIGATORS' MANIFESTO: BETTER, CHEAPER, FASTER
WHAT IS AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT?
Agile methodologies grew out of frustration with traditional waterfall project management. Software
developers were fed up with documenting lengthy development requirements, which could sometimes take
more than the time needed to build the code itself. Agile methodologies, such as scrum, can be applied to
legal work easily. Doing so offers more flexibility in the way legal work is planned for and delivered, as well as
offering more open communication within the team and with the client.
There are three main components in Agile: the project sprint, the project backlog, and the daily scrum
meeting. A sprint is a set time duration during which an agreed-upon set of tasks is to be completed. A typical
sprint is two to four weeks in duration. A project has multiple iterative sprints until all the work is completed
or the budget runs out. The project backlog is the team's to-do list. In the early stages of a project, the backlog
can include broad tasks, sometimes called "epic stories." During each sprint, the team communicates during
a short, focused, daily scrum meeting. These three components enable the team to provide more frequent,
incremental delivery to the stakeholder or client, allow course correction when requirements change, enable
the team to respond to change quickly and increase collaboration and transparency.
INCREMENTAL AND ITERATIVE DELIVERY WITH
SPRINTS
Using the Agile approach, the team identifies the
smallest chunk of work that will bring value to the
stakeholder (client, partner, user). In software, that
means the smallest piece of working code that the
user can review and interact with. In litigation, this
is the smallest piece of work you can share with the
client, a partner or the team. The tasks that define
this smallest chunk of work go into the first sprint.
The project owner, typically a person with
decision-making authority, decides on which tasks
go into each sprint. Once the sprint has begun, the
team can flesh out the details of the tasks to be
completed and decide who will do what. The team
focuses on the goals of a sprint until all the work
is completed. The sprint includes testing for bugs
and user acceptance. At the end of the sprint, the
complete collection of work is delivered to the client
or stakeholder. The sprint ends with a sprint review,
where the team reviews the work just completed,
adds items to the backlog and discusses any lessons
learned.
After the first iteration is completed (coded,
tested and deployed), the process is repeated with
another sprint, developing more features that
build on the first iteration. The client can interact
with and provide feedback on each iteration as it is
completed. This client feedback is logged and added
to the project backlog, which is later reviewed and
reprioritized before the next sprint begins.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
The Scrum Alliance: Why Scrum?
The Agile Alliance: The Agile Manifesto
"What Does the Agile Manifesto Mean?" by Scott Ocamb
The Liquid Planner Blog: Agile vs. Waterfall — Which Project
Management Style Is Right for You?
